


Highs and Lows

by PrincessAmericaChavez



Series: Critical Role Prompts [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Drugs, Drugs Made Them Do It, Fjorester if you squint, Flashbacks, Friendly Fire, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Memory Loss, Mind/Mood Altering Substances, Mindfuck, don't do drugs, or Jestermauk if you squint too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 11:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13703274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessAmericaChavez/pseuds/PrincessAmericaChavez
Summary: Tumblr prompt:Molly has already shown to be willing to try... "interesting" products from herbalists. What happens when he has a violent reaction reaction to one? And I mean lashing-out-screeching-in-Infernal-amnesia-flashbacking violent. Basically an angst-y hurt/comfort thing between Mollymauk and the gang.





	Highs and Lows

They are taking their stupid drugs and Jester doesn’t like it, but when they try to get her to explain  _why_ she just shrugs and says her mind is fun enough. She could give them the real reason, but she doesn’t feel like talking about the past right now. Besides, at least Caleb and Nott are going to stay sober with her. It’s an usually warm night and, cuddled around the fire, she keeps herself busy braiding flowers into Nott’s hair.

She’s not sure what the drugs are supposed to do, but she’s a little curious. She keeps an eye on her companions trying to figure out their reactions, but they are all widely different. 

Yasha has been staring at the sky with a faint smile for the past several minutes and something about that expression, Jester thinks, makes her look like an angel (a very cool badass angel). Mollymauk is sitting on his own, with his eyes on the fire and a very serious expression on his face, like he’s thinking of something super important. Which makes no sense, because this was supposed to be fun for them, right? At least Beau is having fun. She’s been laughing non-stop for the past several minutes, while Fjord tells her some story he heard as a sailor. Fjord is acting the most normal out of all of them, Jester notes, except for the fact that his accent has changed at least five times in the past ten minutes. At least they are all too high to notice, and Caleb is too sunk into his book to listen to them, apparently. Good, she’d have to ask Fjord about that later, when no one else was around. 

“You look very pretty,” she tells Nott as she is finishing the last braid. 

“Really?” the girl asks, running her fingers through her dark locks with very careful fingers. 

“Yes! Let me grab a mirror and I show you!”

Jester jumps to her feet and skips over to where their bags are, bending down trying to find her pretty silver mirror. It’s right by where Molly is sitting and she can hear him mumbling to himself. He doesn’t sound happy. She stops looking through her things to pay better attention and realizes he’s grabbed his head between his hands. 

“…no… no… stop them… we have to…”

“Molly?” She stands up and walks to him. Maybe she can help him. After all, Beau said she was  _the_ cleric, and she is, so maybe this is something that she can fix. “Molly, are you okay?” She asks, crouching next to him and grabbing his shoulder. 

The reaction is immediate. Molly  _screams,_ jumping to his feet. He pulls out one of his swords and swings it up towards Jester, who yelps and tries to back away. The sharp blade cuts up her left ribs and pain flashes through her, a little blinding. Somehow, she manages to bring out her shield and block the second attack. 

“Witch!”

“Molly!” She tries to scream, but his red eyes are darker than usual and his expression is twisted in a darkness she’d never seen before. He doesn’t look like himself, even if he’s using his own face. 

“Hey, what’s going on?” Nott asks approaching. 

“Beast!” Molly yells —his voice lower and harder than usual— as he jumps towards the little goblin, swords in hand. The way he says the word, though, so full of hatred, is terrifying.

With two little screams, Nott manages to evade his first two swings, but a surprise third one leaves a deep red cut on her forearm. 

“Enough!” Caleb, who’s finally dropped his book, is on his feet and looking angry. His diamond spins in his hand and a blast of electric energy hits the lavender tiefling and sends him tumbling backwards, away from Nott. The wizard walks forward and stands between the two of them. 

“Hey, man, what’s all that about?” Beau asks, blinking lazily at them.

“What’s goin’ on?” Fjord asks too. 

He tries to stand but nearly loses his balance while doing so. Jester hears Beauregard snort a laugh at it, but is quickly distracted by Molly throwing another swing of his blade at her. She blocks with her shield again, but his second sword catches her of guard and cuts a slice on her leg. 

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,” she cries, bending sideways trying to ease the weight on her injured leg. “A little help?!” 

She’s not really asking the others, she’s talking to the Traveler, who lends her enough strength to guiding bolt Molly in the chest to push him away. He’s relentless though, and as soon as he catches his balance, he’s charging forward against her again. 

“Hey, that’s not cool!” Beauregard yells, as she intercepts him. Her staff hits his face and nearly knocks him down. 

“Do not get on my way!” Molly roars, swinging at her. He misses every attempt, but her movements are slower than usual, a little tipsy, and as she evades again she trips on her own feet and falls to the ground. “The witch will kill us all!”

Luckily, Fjord is there to pick up for her. He blocks two hits with his falchion, then tries to eldrich blast him, but the spell misses by quite a bit. He’s high too, Jester remembers, and is actually a little relieved that he didn’t hit Molly with the powerful spell. She is  _less_ relieved, when Molly takes the opportunity to swing at Fjord. One cut slices through his cheekbone, not too deep but just barely missing his eye. Blinded by blood, the next hit on his leg makes him stumble to the floor. 

“Fjord!” Jester’s heart clenches with worry as she sees him fall, bloodied and confused. She’s too close to properly blast Molly, doesn’t have much room to aim, so she acts on instinct. With both hands, she just runs forward and pushes the tiefling out of the way before he can take a final swing at the half-orc. “Don’t hurt your friends, it’s not nice!” She yells.

She puts all her strength on the push and it manages to send Molly stumbling several feet away until his back hits a nearby tree. It works and manages to get him away from Fjord and Beau, who can barely get up on their feet. The downside is that she’s now standing right in front of him, his attention fixated on her. 

“Shit, shit, shit,” she hisses under her breath, just as the other tiefling raises his hand towards her. His eyes are suddenly pitch black and he’s reciting words she can’t understand, but a sudden pain begins building in her brain, right behind her eyes.  _No, no, no._ She tries her best to resist it but her vision starts to darken around the edges. 

Just as she’s about to give under the hex’s force, there’s a dry thud and the magic stops. Her vision clears in time to see Mollymauk falling unconscious to the ground, and Yasha standing next to him with her great sword in hand. It seems like she just hit him very hard on the head with the butt of her sword. 

“Are you okay?” Yasha asks, softly. 

Is she? Jester doesn’t know. Her breathing is so heavy that she can barely make a sound. Her legs are shaking. She brings her hands up to her face and touches it softly.

“I still have eyes!” She says relieved, though warm thick blood stains her cheeks. She tries very hard to not think of it. “Oh my god, that was horrible!”

Her brain is still all mixed up, and not in a fun drunk way. Her hands shake and her legs shake and her everything shakes horribly. That wasn’t Molly. That didn’t sound like Molly. He wouldn’t hurt her like this. He wouldn’t- they are all his friends, he wouldn’t do this. 

“Is he okay?” She asks quietly. 

Yasha nods. “Just knocked out for now.”

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. 

She can’t think.

 _Make a joke._ Yes.

“Okay! Cleric time! Who wants some healing! Very great offer! I am very good at it! Totally!” It even sounds half hearted to her, and it probably has to do with the way her voice shakes. She still tries to keep it up. “Okay, bloody bloody, I guess it’s Fjord and Nott!” She pretends to be guessing. 

“Looks like  _you_ need some healing,” Beau points out, eyeing her. 

“Oh, right, right,” she looks down at herself, with her cut in her leg and her cut in her dress, and her face all bloodied. She cures her wounds, then goes to Fjord to help him with the cut on his leg and on his face. “You still look very handsome,” she reassures him. 

With his thumb he cleans some blood from her cheek and frowns. “You okay?”

“That wasn’t Molly,” she tells him. “It wasn’t him. It didn’t even sound like him. I don’t know what it was-”

“Fucking drugs, man,” Beau huffs. “He couldn’t handle them.”

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe that was it,” Jester nods. “It wasn’t his fault.”

“I’m not entirely sure of that,” Fjord replies, frowning towards the unconscious tiefling. He sounds pissed. She hopes it’s not at Molly. 

“Jester,” Caleb calls, hesitantly. 

“Oh, yes, Nott, yes,” she stands back up and goes to her little friend to heal her arm too. 

“What happened to him?” Nott asks, nervously, as she’s healed.

“It was maybe a crazy ghost taking over his body! Or probably he was like being controlled like a puppet by some baddy! Or like maybe it was that his drugs had like evil little creatures inside that then went into his brain and controlled him from there like a robot!”

“What’s a robot?” Nott whispered. 

“Or maybe he just lost his mind and he’s not who we thought he was,” Caleb retorts dryly. He’s just as pissed as Fjord. Probably more. Probably.

“It wasn’t Molly. That wasn’t Molly,” she tells him firmly. 

She keeps telling herself the same thing over and over through the night, as they wait for him to wake up.  _It wasn’t him. Molly wouldn’t hurt us. Molly is my friend. It wasn’t him._

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry that it never really got to the comfort thing! It's just angst and sadness because I love hurting myself and others with emotions!!!
> 
> Also kinda shippy in several ways depending how you squint at it!
> 
> Don't do drugs kids!


End file.
